


Northern Crossing

by persnickett



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27851510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett
Summary: In the year of the lockdown, Newt and Thomas find themselves playing winter hosts to a surprising accidental houseguest.
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 21
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2020





	Northern Crossing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ccecily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ccecily/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Of Brick and of Bone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845472) by [persnickett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/persnickett/pseuds/persnickett). 



> Written for the [Maze Runner Secret Santa](https://mazerunnersecretsanta.tumblr.com/) (tmrss) 2020. A gift for @newtsthomas (now gilesrupert) on tumblr, who likes colourful things and said she would be happy as long as Newtmas were. 😊 Since I have no talent with art or edits, this is my attempt to make her something pretty for the holiday season.
> 
> To cecy, in hopes of brightening up this dark and dreadful year. <3
> 
> (Fits loosely into the [Of Brick and of Bone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845472/chapters/49552580) universe, but both stories can be read completely stand-alone.)

  
  
  
  
It is late. The hour and the season, both, begun to darken. The days have drawn short and taken gold into their hue, nights spread themselves longer and blacker out across the sky; an inky curtain opening on the song of irresistible Polaris’ call.

And each of you eventually, to the last, has taken one by one to the flight.

But it is late. You lingered with your sisters in the hemlock lakes and sweet pine of the lands of your birth, and the distance stretches too long now between the places you might find to rest your wings, and to feed yourselves on the last offerings of summer’s nectar.

Your wings are weak, frost forming high up where the air is thin. Ice crystals take life between the filaments of your feathers, and each wingbeat turns brittle, cannot greet the air, cupping and beating it as it should.

You have come across deserts and over mountains, but not far enough.

Your sisters go before you, plummet like frozen emeralds out of the purpling twilight sky. You would dive after them, but the horizon has already tipped out from under you – rush of cloud, and evening star like a pinwheel.

And you fall.

  
The frost draws her glittering patterns in a cold counterpane over your body, where you lie looking up through your oculus of petals and thorns. The stars continue their reel to Polaris’ tune overhead but your heart is already bowing out of the dance, leaving behind the rush and gallop of the flight. Slowing too much now to keep rhythm enough to answer its call.

Tired, grateful for the rest, you sleep.

It is the pale yellow of dawn and the crunch of a chilly morning footstep that wake you. You lie in a wide garden; frosted grass dotted with the fallen gemstone bodies of your sisters, cousins.

The footsteps draw nearer and the first of your kin is lifted from her gleaming covering of morning’s funerary lace, by a set of hands in a size that make her small. Your heart stirs for her, a fragile thing in so large a world.

A sharp sound from the tall, upright newcomer, then. Surprise. And suddenly there is life again. Unspinning itself, revving back into gossamer wings like a bejeweled toy wound up tight with a rubber band.

A tiny miracle, zigzagging away and off into the bright dawn.

More footsteps, careful now. Another sister lifted from her grassy, crystalline bed, another gram-sized dawn-light resurrection, and the sound the newcomer makes is low this time, and melodic.

Laughter. Delight flavours the vibrations it pushes out into the air around him, and the feeling stirring in your breast now is Hope.

“Newt?” But now there is another voice in the garden, its timbre drowsier, richer with leftover sleep. A yawn, stifled behind a hand thicker, fingers more solid, than Newt’s long, resurrecting ones. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Come out and I’ll show you— but mind where you step! I came out to check on my roses after that cold snap last night, but… look.”

“Is that— ? What happened?”

“It’s a migration,” says Newt, when he is joined by his mate, and a thick-looking coat is settled warmly over his shoulders in devoted hands.

“Hummingbirds?” They are so tall, their lungs so big, that the heat of their breath makes curls of white steam against the bright chill of the morning air.

“Mmhmm. They must be able to go dormant or something in the cold, because… watch this.”

Zing. Flash of peridot and amethyst away over the thorny rosebush and into the sky.

The laugh of surprise this time is just as delighted as Newt’s, and warm like sunshine.

“Wow! Bye, little guy. So, just from the body heat?”

“Are you suggesting my hands _aren’t_ obviously magic?”

“Fair. They always get at least a flutter out of me, too.”

“Aren’t you the punny one then.” The sound of Newt’s reply has a smile bitten fondly out of it. “Settle down and focus.”

And the pair move together about the yard, a duo of prince charmings with a garden full of sleeping beauties to set free from nighttime’s spell.

Nearer they come, and your heart has already begun to find its beat, anticipation and the call of the stars reviving in your blood.

It is strange, being lifted by any power but your own two wings’, but Newt’s hands when they take you are gentle enough. Strong. And you wait, hope filling you, brimful now from tip to tail and the taste for the flight so close the salt in the wind is nearly on your tongue.

“Are your hands getting cold?” The second pair of hands laid tentatively around both of you is warm enough to startle. But first: “Hey, little guy,” an introduction. Voice softened to a low thrum to round the edges out of it. “I’m Thomas.”

Thomas’ warmth joins the hope expanding in the cage of your chest and you know, by the speeding of your heart and the song of flight singing through your blood, that it is time. Ready. Your turn to be a tiny miracle disappearing into the morning sun – but instead the air stays thin and weak, unclimbable around you, and your wing becomes a steely lance of pain.

“Oh—” The hurt in the sound that Newt makes is enough he might have felt it himself.

“What’s wrong?” Thomas sounds like sorrow. “Broken wing?” But you can feel the way instinct bristles protectiveness down the lines of his nerves, a drive and impatience for action, to help, that shivers in under your feathers to your skin.

“I don’t know. Could be a sprain. Or just stunned? Give her a minute.”

Thomas’ thumb moves in a pattern of comfort over Newt’s fingers where they hold you, waiting and watchful. He presses his mouth to Newt’s cheek. A kiss – a pledge that makes Newt’s skin a feather’s-breadth warmer under your feet, his heart pick up its rhythm as if it too could hear the call of the Southern Cross.

And so you try again, but again the air will not hold you, and your princes’ efforts are in vain.

“Should we bring it inside?”

Newt’s head shakes, crowned as it is with a golden thatch of hair that shines in the pale sunlight, a sweet contrast beside Thomas’ soft mahogany brown.

“We don’t want her to panic, or be trapped, in case her wing heals. I’ll need to research it, or call a wildlife rescue, someone who will know what to do. But it’s too cold to leave her.”

“Stay right here,” Thomas says, with another kiss to the side of Newt’s cornsilk yellow hair; the order and the reassurance either for one of you, or both.

And stay, the both of you do.

Thomas finds you a box, and Newt lines it with a bed of soft cloth for you to nest down in. They feed you on sugar water, sipped from a makeshift jar-lid dish of bright dahlia red, or even cupped patiently in the palms of their hands.

Warmed, nourished on sweet water, your fire for the flight ignites and the call of the sky still sings through your bloodstream. But the air stays diffuse and useless around and under you, and instead you drift – in and out of pain’s bite in your wing while the daylight slips by, the sun changing place in its grand diurnal arc through the sky each time your tiny eyes come open.

And each time, there is Newt. Yet to leave your side, he holds you, nestled in his hand for warmth now and again or cradled against the big, unhurried thump of his noble, princely heart the long day through.

And when night falls, rather than cajole him indoors to the warmth of their bed, Thomas builds the three of you a woodfire of snapping maple, blond birch and fragrant cedar, and your princes lie out in their own nest of cuddle-fleecy clothing and downy, pillowy blankets and look up with you to the stars.

Newt tells the stories of Delphinus, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, and you learn new names for the nightly shapes that light your highway; charting your crossing through the autumn sky to the lands of undying bounties, where winter cannot reach and summer knows no end. While Thomas tends the fire, and he sees to the blankets and Newt’s every small comfort, and seems to move nearly as much and constantly as birds themselves do.

His hands are the warmest, and Newt accuses him of ‘cheating’ in their apparent race for becoming your favourite, when you drowse with your chin still at rest on the callused tip of his work-roughened finger.

“It’s just because your famous magical hands are like blocks of ice—” A hiss of surprise, “mmm,” and a choked half-laugh, as those hands delve beneath the blankets, no doubt in quest of that fire-warm skin. “Hey, watch where you’re putting those things.”

“Why? What good is it being a bloody furnace on legs if you can’t even serv— ohh, that’s why.”

“Warned you.”

“In front of the _children_? Tommy,” Newt turns his attentions from his tales of Ursa Minor and Jupiter’s Jovian rings to roll sidewise into him, one hand reappearing to twine slender-strong fingers in between Thomas’ warm waiting ones; welcoming and receptive where Newt presses them down into the grass. “You’re incorrigible.”

Thomas’ grin goes broad and bright, lighting up for Newt like the sun, even by starlight.

“She’ll forgive me.” His free hand goes to good use, rolling his mate the rest of the way up on top so their hips slot in together, bodies finding their own familiar jigsaw fit under their nested layers of quilted down, and love-worn and motheaten inherited tartan. “I’m her favourite, remember?”

Newt’s eyes twinkle, bright and merry in the fire’s light, teeth showing white and sharp for a flash before he leans down to silence him with kisses – only to nuzzle closer next, draw and coax new, softer sounds out of him with cherishing whispers and the edges of his teeth set worshipfully against his lover’s skin.

And the soft bantering sounds of their laughter and sweet, comfortable love-murmurs make up your lullaby, to the cozy tempo of the woodfire’s orange crackle and flicker, sizzle and pop, under the watchful glimmer of Delphinus and Cygnus, winging through their steps of the Great Dance above.

~ ~ ~  
  


“What are you two up to in here?”

Thomas enters in between the slanting beams of sunlight, autumn’s gold silvering to pewter and white through the leaded panes, his smile as bright as its usual habit and his traditional offering in hand – a gay, confetti-coloured cup filled to the loving brim with something that steams.

Newt’s smile goes mild and soft admid the green schefflera and scarlet hibiscus and the pale, perfumed, blossoming sweet pea that climb his little conservatory’s walls as he receives the day’s gift. Along with their habitual kiss, lingering a quiet, savouring moment at the corner of his mouth before he lets his smile crack wider open again and gives his proud reply.

“Painting.”

Newt’s grin is rarer than Thomas’, but no less to your eyes in its light.

Thomas’ sound is sudden joy, surprise and wonder spilling over each other at once into the short, happy bark that makes his laugh, as the pair of them look down on you at your canvas.

“You’re _covered_!” His words, though, come softer, rueful and fond. Chiding through his adoring smile. “C.C.!”

The days have flowed into each other like a meander in a mountain stream since that fateful morning dawned and brought with its cold, early light the acceptance for the three of you, in your strange new flock, that flight had not returned to your wings. And you were brought indoors to the warmth and the smells of sawdust and cinnamon and Thomas’ pancakes, and the pungent, earthen tang of Newt’s paints.

And still your pair of princes have yet to find any success agreeing on your name.

“How do you know she’s a girl?” Thomas had asked, as they lay out together on the sofa the way they always did of an evening – stretched languorously out like sleepy kittens and bathed in the television’s shifting electric glow. Newt repeatedly denying the hour may have come to mount the stairs to bed until he inevitably succumbs to his nightly sleep pillowed indulgently on Thomas’ chest, as helplessly lulled as you yourself have been by that endless enduring warmth and the sure, steady cadence of that heart. Rumpled and loose as if the gods had simply dropped him there. Like a luxuriant kimono in rich gold brocade and finest celestial silk, doffed by some capricious Callisto or Cassiopeia.

And Thomas’ eyes drift from the diversions of the screen to smile into the night, whispering awed affections and incredulous ‘ _how’d I get this lucky_ ’s there is nobody save for you yourself there to hear, and pressing thankful kisses disbelievingly into the top of Newt’s drowsing golden head while his fingers idly travel the long, straight path of his spine.

Newt, for his part, had merely stroked a gentle finger under your beak and rightly pointed out “the males have the ruby throats,” asserting that your true name and station must clearly be that of _Lady Cecily_.

Thomas’ response assured him that in that case, your features were most obviously those of a _Cordelia_ , to which Newt smoothly replied somebody must need their remote privileges revoked. As the house’s nightly twilight entertainments lately contained entirely too much comedic vampire dusting.

A fact Thomas refuted by leaning into your box to whisper he knew it must be a lie, because when it came to comedic vampire dusting, too much was “not even a thing”.

His offered compromise of ‘ _Cece’_ , is a proposal Newt has yet to accept.

“Is that okay for her?” is what Thomas says now. “The paint?”  
  


“Watercolour,” Newt replies, setting aside his cup. “I’ll get her squirt bottle and give her a little bath. She’ll be alright,” his tone slips slightly fawning as his big hands curl around you, warmer in places even than Thomas’ now from the cup’s garish sides, and already as smudged with shades of forest pine, dark ash, and aquamarine as Thomas accuses you yourself of being. He scoops you carefully off the canvas of your oeuvre, the better to show off your work. “It was going to be her portrait but I’m not sure she approved…”

  
Thomas’ head gives an appraising tilt to the side and he laughs the way Newt did – making his low melody of delighted mirth when the bright petal red and banana-leaf green of his paints drew you like a magnet. As much pleased astonishment flowing through the bubbling current of the sound as fluttering through your own breast, the moment you both discover you have gained back strength enough over the days to hop on your own right out of your makeshift nursery box.

Only to find yourself showily daubed in Newt’s palette when you land, and leaving thrilling new gashes and fortuitous pinpricks of colour in your wake.

The canvas you present when your work is done boasts a liberal twitching of autumnal ochre and gold tail feather brush strokes, elegant wingtip sweeps of indigo-into-bright-azure, strong-willed and delicate intricately-clawed foot tracks, spelling out a path in dark cherrywood black. All of them, each to the last, leading south.

  
“Had some notes, huh? Prima donna.”

“It’s a _collaborative effort_ ,” Newt corrects, taking up his cup again once you are settled back in the soft familiar folds of your fleecy shoebox bed. His sharp-angled shoulders straightening proud and prim in the listing light. “Truth be known, I think she’s rather improved it.”

Newt raises an eyebrow over the edge of his mug, despite the way his hands wrap themselves about it like he could wrap the entirety of himself in its comfort as he leans in, taking in the aroma rising from its steam. It is different from its usual rich and bitter dark-roasted note of energy and excitement today, soothing and grassy, herbaceous leaf and bergamot.

“Earl Grey?”  
  


“I just… saw you’ve been working a lot lately on this.” Thomas’ head ducks and the tips of his ears pinken as if he has been caught out at something, but he moves his gaze to Newt’s easel, turning their attentions to a canvas you know well. A world in grey and drizzle-silver, iron-coloured spires and dashes of double-decker red looking out over little white boats afloat in their frozen moment of stopped time on a storm-coloured river.

Newt stares silently into a small crystalline orb when he paints that one, filled with a swarm of white flecks that swirl and pirouette under its shiny-smooth surface when it is shaken. Flitting and dancing back down to the bottom of the globe around miniature shapes of a tall, lonely clock tower, swooping scallops of cables on a spanning bridge, backgrounded by a great ferris wheel, standing high and wide and round like an Eye.

  
“I saw the news.” Thomas’ voice is gentle. “Twenty thousand cases.” His chin hooks over Newt’s shoulder as he moves to stand behind him, arms settling in a comfortable, protective ring around his waist. “Are you worried about them?”

  
“No,” Newt turns his head to give his answer into the crown of Thomas’ hair. “They’re a good drive out of the way of the city, that’s the real hot-spot. And they’re _very_ careful.” A wistful chuckle, muffled by soft brown curls. “Dad mixed up a bottle of anti-bac he keeps at the door for everything that comes into the house, and my mum won’t stop teasing him. They’re so funny. …But I do miss them.” Newt’s sigh is successfully lightened by the kiss Thomas pushes into the curve of his neck. “And never a word to Sonya, but I might even, possibly, miss the snow.”

“We might get snow.”

“None of your powdered sugar pixie dustings!” Newt teases. “Proper snow, where you can build a proper snowman, and make a snow angel and find yourself _very_ much on the losing end of a snowball fight with your sister and her girlfriend! And… go into the city to be drenched by some twat haring past in a taxi, with proper London sludge.” The derisive chime in Newt’s voice mellows and smooths down. “I just wish sometimes… I know some day you’ll meet them, but travel bans have just been going so long… I don’t know when we’ll be able to fly freely again.”

The colour of Newt’s regret fills up and flavours the air so strongly you are sure that you taste it.

Thomas softens his hold on him enough that he can turn around within the embrace. He lifts a hand to stroke a fallen straw-coloured lock attentively from Newt’s furrowing brow and suggests that maybe a certain holiday film, set in a certain drizzly-silver monochrome city, should take the place of their nightly vampiric entertainment tonight.

Newt’s raised eyebrow this time is a warning, even as he lets Thomas pull him closer, singing all the while into his ear about how he doesn’t _Want a Lot for Christmas.._.

“I wasn’t joking about those remote privileges,” Newt cautions, mock-stern and launching into a list of the household’s banned content even as he cuddles with unabashed indulgence into the lee of Thomas’ comforting embrace, cheek laid comfortably on his broad shoulder and his still-steaming cup coddled carefully between them in both his hands.

And every bit of you that has room to feel is flooded with the sympathy and the shared fate that finds you both flightless. Grounded from the skies and the company of kin, among the conservatory’s indoor blossoms and vines and the artful solace and visions of Newt’s canvases.  
  


~ ~ ~

Outside the leaded panes of the conservatory’s walls, the days turn from their golden and red-leaf glory to a dusky pale dreamscape, washed in silver. Within, your heroic rescuers put up starry garlands and sprigs of mistletoe in the hall and a menorah full of steadfast, hopeful candles decks the sill. Newt brings in freshly cut spruce boughs to grace the mantel and add its rich forest aromas intoxicatingly into to the warm cinnamon and sawdust air, and he paints wintergreen, and holly, and wakes one dusky silver-washed morning to find Thomas already up and away out of their bed before the dawn.

“What in the bloody blazes—” Newt asks, of either you or the passing breeze, as you settle into what has become your habitual spot on his shoulder, and the two of you step out into the garden to find it transformed as if by faerie magic overnight.

The lawn, Newt’s lovingly burlap-wrapped rosebushes, the branches of the trees – all blanketed while he slept, in a thick, eiderdown-fluffy layer of pristine white.

“Tommy?” Newt calls out as he makes his way, each step sinking soft and marshmallow-y deep into gentle peaks and shallow drifts. “What have you done…”

It is not all that has changed. At the end of the garden loom newly arrived signboard shapes, stretching up under the snow-cloudless blue sky.

“Tommy?” Newt calls again. A suspicious note enters his tone, but the corner of his mouth lifts, in spite of himself, as he gazes wonderingly up at the sight – a tall, lonely clock tower, swooping scallops of cables on a spanning bridge, complete with traffic of miniature automobiles and dashes of double-decker red.

A crinkly plastic storm-coloured river flows by, afloat with little white boats. All backgrounded by that great standing wheel like an Eye.

“Surprise!!”

You feel Newt’s start from your thick woollen-knit perch on his shoulder, the usual tension of his posture turned wary and expectant.

  
At the centre of the display, a little white wooden table stands, bearing the gleaming orb of the snow-globe that inspired it. And a glowing computer screen, lit up bright in the morning sun with the image of two faces. One framed by a fall of flowing yellow hair the same luminous flaxen hue to match Newt’s; the other dark, graced by a queenly crowning array of long, intricate braids.

“Sonya!? …Harriet, hi.”

“Happy New Year, you jerk!” Chirrups the luminous blonde. “Thanks for calling.”

“Hap— Oi, it was arse o’clock in the morning there, of course I wasn’t about to— OH. No.” The bright screen’s cheery image blips and splits and shrinks out into two, the pair of smiling fond faces becoming instantaneously four, within the space of a blink. “ _Mum_?” Yet another fetching blonde head of hair, and one already a venerably paternal iron grey. “What the bloody hell is happen—”

“Newton! Language!” A prompting elbow thrust proddingly into a fatherly set of ribs. “ _Tell_ him!”

“Right. Best _watch that fookin’ mouth of yers_ , son.”

“DANIEL!”

Youthful giggles bubble up clear and indomitable as an Alpine spring from the rest of the gathering, intercut with a _smack_ – first sharply to Newt’s father’s shoulder, then in an apologetic kiss pressed loving and laughingly to his cheek, the better to soothe an over-dramatic reaction of mock-pain.

Newt’s hand has flown to his mouth, laughter unable to banish the sparkle of tears that have sprung into his eyes to salt the air.

“What are you all doing? And where’s Thomas? At least one of you must know what that idiot is up t—oh, of-bloody- _course_.”

Newt mutters what is apparently his favourite curse-word again as the bottom of the screen fills itself up. More blinking, splitting, multiplying screens joining in, showing more affectionate grins on more celebratory faces.

The last of which to join, Newt notices finally – once he has pushed fond, stricken Hellos to each one through a choked-sounding throat – shows Thomas. Against a backdrop entirely of eiderdown-fluffy, marshmallow-y deep white.

Newt whirls about. Glittering eyes nearly missing him entirely, until he looks down.

For Thomas is down in the ersatz snow, grinning bright and mischievously into his phone in wait for Newt to turn.

And find him on bended knee.

“ _Tommy_!” You can feel the unwinding, unbundling ebbing of the tense stiffness that always floods away out of Newt’s stance like the spread of a warming tide, whenever Thomas is at his side and within his sight.

“Newt, I’m sorry—”

  
“Sorry!? I shudder to think whatever for? Must really be something, to merit all this much apology. Tommy, _look_ at all of this. What have you done? If it’s my roses—”

“No, Newt—Newt! Would you look at me?” And the both of you do. Thomas’ eyes are as soulfully big as their usual, but welling deep with something different and new, limpid, and solemn. “It’s not an apology. I’m saying… I’m sorry I don’t have a ring for you, for… Reasons.”

“Most of the reasons being he straight-up forgot!”

“Yeah, that— Thanks Fry.” Thomas’ reply layers itself over a medley of laughter from the screen and what sounds like a good-natured ‘ _no problem, man’_ in Fry’s voice. And an ‘ _only straight thing he’s done in years_ ’ in another, that makes Thomas’ mouth curl up with acknowledging humour at the edge, and Sonya’s gleeful cackle fill up the garden like the joyous tinkling of golden bells. “It’s not an apology,” Thomas continues, “it’s a proposal,” both their eyes glistening now as he reaches out determinedly to take Newt’s hand in his. “Newt—”

“But you _have_ got my coat.”

“Huh? OH. Sorry yeah—”

“DON’T GET UP, you ninny!” Newt’s sudden rebuke startles him out of a hasty attempt to scramble ably to his feet, flushed with his usual readiness to leap into action at the merest hint of Newt’s need. “I’m not cold. Check the pocket.”

Thomas’ hands fumbling through the various folded pockets and pleats of Newt’s soft duffle coat move with the familiarity of a family of ermine-white rabbits, darting in and out of a well-worn warren of burrows and boltholes to blithely resurface bearing a box. Velveteen and green, smaller even than you yourself.

A chorale of reaction chimes ringingly out from the screen.

“Oh of course.”

“Figures.”

“…Holy shit.”

“ _Language_!”  
  


  
“Rings…” The word is a breath, nearly lost in the morning air as Thomas’ suddenly-trembling fingers pry open the delicate velveteen lid, and he looks up from the contents to see Newt, lowering down to meet him upon one matching bended knee.

“Only one man in the world could be so concerned with every elaborate, extravagant detail of somehow pulling all of this off, he forgets something as central as the rings. But to do it because he’s too busy having my every comfort and wish and whim at heart, and then going and making that my actual life? The same man who reminds me of the man I am, who picks my arse up and dusts me off on the bad days when I forget? And makes me pancakes on the good days – or any day – and brings my coffee in, and successfully, secretly, somehow plans out all of …whatever you call all of this. And sure, forgets a little thing like rings. But all of that and yet he never, ever, forgets my coat.”

“Newt—”

“The only man this man would ever have,” Newt finishes. “If you’ll have me?”

“…Wow. How long have you been carrying these around?”

“I’m sorry,” Newt leans in toward him, slow enough to allow you your shifting balance on his shoulder, and reaches up to lay his palm contritely against Thomas’ cheek. Just long enough to accept the kiss Thomas turns to place in its centre before he moves it in a gesture toward all his most beloved faces smiling from the screen. “I wanted you to meet everyone properly, and then everything this entire dumpster-fire of a year just kept getting worse, and worse still... And now, as usual… if you haven’t gone and found a way to get round me, and b—” The telltale screenward flick of Newt’s gaze as he visibly amends of his choice in ‘language’ is small, and furtively quick enough only you and Thomas could possibly count yourselves close enough to catch it as it flits its way past. “...Stuff it all up.”

Thomas sniffs. The sweep of his lashes like the flutter of a wingbeat as he blinks away tears, still staring down at the smooth matching bands in their little green box, gleaming under the bright and open cloudless sky.

“Rings,” he says again, awestricken. “…You literally complete me.”

“Alright. You can stop that, I’ve already hidden the remote.” Grins, slow and heartfelt, each matching the other’s light as Thomas leans in toward Newt too, and their foreheads touch together. Closing a circuit, completing a world where only the two of them abide. “Shut up and marry me?”

A watery chuckle.

“I asked you first.”

It is too much for the collection of anticipating faces in audience on the screen.

“Say ‘yes’, you nimrods, we’re turning blue!”

  
“Yeah, my battery’s klunking out.”

  
“I think your mother-in-law-to-be is growing moss!!”

A laughing exchange of agreements follows, and next, of rings.

And then an argument – happily beginning when Thomas accuses Newt of ‘stealing his proposal’ only to be met with the rebuttal that it is not stealing to rightfully steal back what was stolen first – and only ended by the thump and scatter against Thomas’ shoulder of something gleaming, and cold.

“Your sister told us you like losing at snowball fights, so!”

Two men stand at the end of the garden, appearing from behind the signboard snow-globe scene as if they had sprung up out of the meringue-whited lawn like a pair of tall, brash and brawny winter sprites.

“So we thought we’d come give your fiancé a socially distanced butt-kicking. Consider it our engagement present.”

The briny tang of Newt’s happily stunned tears sharpens the air all over again and Thomas’ smile is proud as summer sunshine in the dead of winter’s snow, with the success of this latest surprise.

“Minho!? _Gally_?”

The lower halves of their faces are covered by masks, but their eyes are smiling double, to make up for it.

“How else did you think Thomas pulled all of this off? Big Ben, and the bridge…”

“Gally knows a guy, from work. He does all the set dressings and matte paintings for the movie sets."

“Too bad he doesn’t do the installations. That stupid fucking wheel…”

“My left big toe might never recover.”

“…If you shanks are about done chit-chatting?”

“Oh, Tommy. You’ve thought of everything!” A white canvas tarpaulin near the centre of the yard is ceremoniously lifted to reveal rows of stacked snowballs, cold and gleaming and _real_. For which Newt is granted no further explanation than a refrigerator truck and at least one favour he probably doesn’t want to know about, promised to somebody named Jorge. “In a hurry for an arse-whipping then, Gal?”

“Yeah, you know this stuff doesn’t melt, right?

“Right. Which is why unless you really, _really_ like cleaning up fake snow – for weeks – I got a guy coming around at two p.m.”

“You really did think of everything.”

“Yeah he did – _Except a ring_!”

And with another snowy thump-and-scatter blow landed against Thomas’ shoulder, the raucous shouts and yelps that make the wrappings of Newt’s snowball fight gift fill the marshmallow meringue garden with their joyful echo, before the sounds of goodbye-ing from the computer screen have even yet to die away. And your heroes are left shouting their replies of love and of thanks to the adulations and well-wishing from the dwindling faces left on screen in between ducking frosty attacks and gaily returning eager fire.

Though not before they have seen you safe and warmly nestled into your box, brought out in accompaniment with Newt’s coat all the while by Thomas. Who has yet to forget your safety or your comfort for even a moment more than you have known him to be forgetful of Newt’s. Ever since that frostbitten day when you fell from the stars of a plum and lavender twilight and into their lives, and the warmth of their love wakened your heart.

  
~ ~ ~

The snow is cleared from the yard at two p.m. sharp, but outside the leaded windows the signboard shapes stay, and grace the images that fill Newt’s canvases while the days march past, and turn themselves into weeks.

Slowly the light begins to come back to the days and the nights to retreat, to sharpen and shrink. Withdrawing their dominion over the sky to let in the rains that green the grasses and raise the young buds and fresh shoots. And the trees stretching their pleading skeleton fingers up to a watery sky are granted their answer of cold spring showers, to bathe them and tip them with new living green.

Until a morning dawns that makes the air warm and the earth brown and soft, and Newt takes Thomas out to help him strike down their little living snow-globe scene, and make confessions. First, that while he is sure they are likely bringing down the property value and the neighbours won’t agree, Newt himself will be ever so slightly, just the smallest bit sad; bidding his big clock tower and his bridge with its stormy grey river farewell.

Second, Newt confides, he has been witness to the slowly growing return of the strength and the vigour that live in your bones, as the weeks and nights have flowed and flown past. And then, just this morning, you rose right up and out of your boxed-in bed to meet his greeting gaze, your sharp little eyes looking straight into his astonished round ones, as you hovered just over the edge of his confetti-coloured cup.

It has come time, he says, to find a plan for your release into the wild places and open skies of your freedom. A farewell that will be sadder by far.

In the morning, the only bridge and tower left to inspire Newt’s eye are in miniature, and set under the shiny-smooth surface of the snow-globe’s dome. But the little orb has gained something new – the adornment of a shining gold ribbon. Wrapped round and round, and tied at one end in a painstaking bow. The other end is left long, leading down to the floor and across. All the way away under the conservatory door.

You settle into your place on Newt’s shoulder as the two of you make your way outside, his posture’s tension all curiosity and enticement, the entire way along the ribbon’s entreating, satiny trail. It leads you all the long way out to the back of the garden, where its long golden lure culminates in yet another bow, wrapped around a new little crystalline dome.

Inside the curves of the new globe’s walls, a showily jewel-toned hummingbird is modeled in mid-flight, balanced on the tips of its tailfeathers among the flecks of white that swirl and pirouette when it is shaken – set against a background of flourishing red roses, and flanked by a rustic wooden birdhouse. Outside, once again, and nestled into the garden next to Newt’s rosebush, Thomas has left the living gift to match.

Newt brings you your paints and the two of you set about decorating your new apartment. And when your work is done, Newt adds the final crown of finishing touches on the side, lettered regally out in a curling golden ribbon of script:

  
_Cece_.

And your new birdhouse is ready, decked liberally in twitching tailfeather brush strokes and elegant wingtip arcs and sweeps; its size a perfect hand-made fit for housing the dimensions of your box. Where you can lie at night to look up through that oculus of petals and thorns to the stars, and the wild places and open skies of your coming freedom.

And there you stay, until the spring evening falls that fills the twilight gloaming with visiting melodies, the darting thrum and whirr of your sisters. A gamboling cohort of quick garden nymphs, returned from their adventures to the undying bounties to find you here, along their way back to the hemlock lakes and sweet pine of the breeding lands of your births. And your wings add their note, whole and unbroken, to the traveling chorus of your kin.

~ ~ ~

You are early.

No longer one to linger last with her sisters among the hemlock and pine, you have come already across deserts and over mountains.

At long last to peep in through leaded glass panes, where a carefully hung canvas boasts autumnal ochre and gold tail feather brush strokes, elegant wingtip sweeps of indigo-into-bright-azure, and strong-willed and delicate intricately-clawed foot tracks, spelling out a path in dark cherrywood black. Hung proudly up on display so that all of them, each to the last, points as the artist intended; leading south.

But the conservatory is empty, easels unoccupied. Brushes left balanced on lonely silver tin cans.

An abandoned confetti-coloured cup sits on the little table between the hibiscus and climbing sweet pea, its once-steaming contents long ago cooled.

Then. Movement in the garden, sound and footsteps and your eyes find flourishing landmark roses. Lovingly tended by their tall, upright keeper; the devoted spray of his gardening hose scattering droplets like diamonds and casting misted rainbows into the sunlit autumn air.

And you dive.

Dipping and ducking in between the drops that cool the rush and heat of the flight from your veins, refreshing and reviving the strength of your wings. Dancing and weaving a serpentine path in between bars of blue, indigo, violet in the refracted mist.

A sharp sound, then, from the golden-haired gardener. Surprise. Delight flavouring the vibrations his laugh pushes out into the air around him, and the feeling stirring in your breast now is: _Home_.

“Newt?” Another voice in the garden. “You out here? I couldn’t find your passport—”

“Tommy get out here! Look!”

“No way! It can’t be— can it?”

“I came out to do one last good watering before we leave and there she was – just darting in and out of the water, like playing, in the hose. Our poor girl, you’ve come such a long way! Are you thirsty?”

Newt offers a cupped palm full of the garden hose’s clear water, the same way they fed you on sweet syrup once, by the light of a fragrant fire of cedar wood, blond birch and maple, crackling under the wheeling shapes of the stars. But you have already taken your landing on the warm, work-callused fingertip of Thomas’ outstretched hand.

“Whoa. Definitely her then.”

  
“Still playing favourites!” Newt’s scolding chimes none the less with pleased laughter. “Look at her, making herself at home – ha! – it’s as if she’s wondering what happened to your ring. Don’t worry Cecily, we’ll have new ones when we come back next week. We can fly now too, you know!” Newt strokes a careful finger thoughtfully down your back – strong now, grateful and free. “To think, this time last year we were both stuck here, grounded. And now…”

“What is it they say?” Thomas’ finger under your chin is just as tender. “Be thankful for the small miracles?”

But you are no longer the smallest. You have one more now, tinier yet, to share. A flare of sunny emerald and topaz herald her arrival, a bright accompaniment to the humming fanfare of your daughter’s new-minted wings.

“Cece!? Is this who I think it is? Oh, look at them,” Newt marvels. Joy and no small amount of pride as he watches you take to the air, hovering close to show her the way to drink from the cup of his hand – where she is already perched on the edge of a long, gentle finger, new and unafraid. Absolute in her mother’s confidence in this place; Safe Haven to fragile things that make their way in so large and so wondrous a world. “…About time I was somebody’s favourite.”

“Hope I’m that popular this week.” As bright a smile as always in place, but there is an edge in Thomas’ voice, a familiar old energy that shivers in under your feathers and right to your skin.

“I’ve never seen you so nervous! Not getting cold feet are you?”

“To match your ice-block hands?” Thomas cups his hands around Newt’s, holding the three of you. Adding his warmth, as he does, to all things he touches. “Nah. I guess I just can’t believe the first time I’m meeting your parents is going to be at our _wedding_.”

“And all the times they’ve met you already don’t count because?”

“Online! It’s different in person.”

“True. But only because my mother will actually pinch your cheeks raw instead of just talking about it. And instead of _asking_ whether we’re eating enough, you should probably prepare to be personally escorted to the dining room. And by escorted I do mean forcibly frog-marched. Possibly briefly imprisoned.”

“Noted.”

“Oh and Sonya does follow up on her threats, so you might want to pack some shin guards if you have any handy. Maybe an athletic cup.”

Thomas’ laugh is just as you remember. Warm and open as the way sunshine bathes a wide, blossoming summer meadow. “Way ahead of you.”

“Tommy. I don’t need to tell you they’re going to love you. They already do.”

“I know, it’s just—”

“And if they don’t, I’ll just have to do it for them.” Newt leans in toward him so that their foreheads touch together and close their little circuit; complete their little world where only the two of them abide. “Which would mean I’d be loving you four times as often as I’d already planned. You didn’t have your heart set on actually leaving the hotel room did you?”

“You mean our _honeymoon suite_?” The words come with a savouring note, as if Thomas is speaking them aloud simply to enjoy their sound. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” And the soft, sly smile that it puts across Newt’s lips. “…You know, we’re going to have to come up with a name for this one too.”

“Before you say it, we’re not naming it Willow.”

“Rude! I was gonna say how about Fred?”

“I told you the males have the red throats, _she’s a girl_ Tommy!”

“Fred is a girl’s name.”

“…I’m going to have to find a better hiding place for that remote.”

“You’d have to stay awake long enough first…”

The water fight that ensues when Newt flicks his cupped palmful of water Thomas’ way is short-lived but spritely enough that both of your princely heroes are drenched, laughing and dripping, well before their wrestling for control of the hose gives way to simply watching – with open joy and matching grins much too bright for a thing like water to dampen – as you teach your new little miracle the way to dip and dive in and out of the spray. To cool and temper the rush and heat of the flight from her body and re-birth the strength in young, ready new wings.

And when it is time, the soft bantering sounds of their laughter follow on your tailfeathers and make the tune of your farewell, Thomas offering more names and suggestions until Newt will undoubtedly have to silence him with kisses, as you take to the early autumn sky to join with your sisters. Flashes of peridot and amethyst at the whim of the call of Polaris, past your birdhouse and into the sky – flanked by its landmark of Newt’s flourishing-bright roses, a standing beacon season through season. Marking out safe passage for your sisters, cousins. Your daughters’ daughters, and their children to come after.

Bound for the lands of undying bounties, where winter cannot reach and summer knows no end. Under the watchful glimmer of Delphinus, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, winging through their steps in the Great Dance everlasting, that chart your adventures and light your way on this, the wondrous and storied journey of your northern crossing.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> For cecy and for all of you - happy holidays and I hope you enjoyed. <3
> 
> But just a quick lil PSA: This is a story. I’ve done my best to research it and make it reflect life where it can but please. If you find a wounded bird or animal, remember to ignore everything it has told you except this: **Make looking up your local Humane Society or Wildlife Rescue and calling for advice or help from an expert your first course of action.** We all want to help, but picking up or taking in wild things isn’t always what is best for them.
> 
> And here’s to a Safe and Merry Christmas and a Hopeful and Bright 2021!!


End file.
